Not too long ago at UCLA and Harvard University.

ELLE WOODS
UCLA Homecoming Queen and Delta Nu President. Confident and high-spirited, Elle is the quintessential blonde Valley Girl who follows her boyfriend to Harvard Law School and realizes that she has so much more to offer than a pretty face. She lifts up those around her due to her intense drive and positivity.

EMMETT FORREST
A smart and sensitive law student who takes Elle under his wing. He is charming, quirky, lovable, and friendly. At Harvard, he’s Professor Callahan’s Teaching Assistant.

WARNER HUNTINGTON III
A good-looking but shallow and pompous guy who breaks Elle’s heart and heads off to Harvard Law. He cares deeply about what people think of him. He plans to
be a senator by the time he’s 30.

MARGOT, SERENA, PILAR, KATE, AND A BEVY OF DELTA NU SORORITY GIRLS
Elle’s best friends and sorority sisters who help her navigate the story by acting as a Greek Chorus. Margot is seemingly dim-witted and boy-crazy, Serena is an energetic cheerleader, Pilar is the sassy and sensible one, and Kate is the brainiest and quirkiest sorority sister who helps Elle study to get into Harvard Law.

BRUISER
Elle’s loyal and constant companion. Loveable and loving.

PAULETTE BONAFONTE
The funny owner of Hair Affair. She is brash, caring, optimistic, and has a heart of gold. She and Elle help each other achieve their dreams.

PROFESSOR CALLAHAN
Harvard Law’s pompous, smooth, authoritative, and manipulative criminal law professor. He has a reputation for being an extremely strict and tough professor and a highly successful lawyer. He will do anything to get what he wants, regardless of morality.

VIVIENNE KENSINGTON
A smart, savvy and uptight law student, and Warner’s new girlfriend, who initially dismisses Elle but grows to be her friend. A Blueblood Harvard Student.

BROOKE WYNDAM
An exercise video tycoon who is an alum of Elle’s sorority. She is energetic and charismatic yet currently on trial for her husband’s murder.

Inspiration

Legally Blonde is based on the 2001 film, which, in turn, is based on the novel, Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown. The novel is a compilation of funny letters and stories from Brown’s time in Stanford Law School. Producers had a desire to bring the film’s story to Broadway. They brought together composer, Laurence O’Keefe, and his wife and lyricist, Nell Benjamin, screenwriter, Heather Hach, and renowned choreographer/director, Jerry Mitchell, to work on the project.

Productions

Legally Blonde premiered at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Theatre in February of 2007. The show then transferred to Broadway, where it opened at the Palace Theatre on April 29, 2007. The original production starred Laura Bell Bundy and Christian Borle as Elle Woods and Emmett Forrest respectively. It ran for 595 regular performances before closing on October 19, 2008.

Shortly before the Broadway production closed, a national tour opened on September 21, 2008. It ended on August 15, 2010. A non-Equity tour opened just a month later. It started on September 21, 2010, in Jackson, Mississippi, and ended on May 15, 2011, in New Haven, Connecticut.

The West End premiere of Legally Blonde opened on January 13, 2010, at the Savoy Theatre. It became one of the most popular shows on the West End, but eventually closed on April 7, 2012, after 974 performances. A UK national tour ran from July 8, 2011, to October 6, 2012. Outside of the UK, the musical has also enjoyed significant success. An Australian production opened in October 2012, and there have been international productions from South Korea to Sweden, Austria to the Philippines and France to Panama.

Cultural Influence

• Legally Blonde was filmed for television and broadcast on MTV in late 2007.

• With the popularity of the televised musical, a reality program entitled Legally Blonde – The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods aired on MTV. It aimed to cast the next actress to play Elle Woods on Broadway.

• The musical was translated to German for its Austrian premiere, and made its French-Canadian premiere in Montreal in May 2014.

Legally Female: A Brief Historical Overview of Women in the Law

For years, women faced a unique challenge in their efforts to penetrate the profession of the practice of law. Unlike other professions, all institutions of the law, namely the law schools, the bar associations and the courts, were under the exclusive control of men. Women were left with no door to enter this entirely malecontrolled monopoly…and men didn’t want to let women into their turf.

Therefore, the history of women in the law is closely connected to the women’s suffragist movement in its early stage and later, the women’s rights movement. For example, by 1890, about five percent of doctors in the United States were women as opposed to only a handful of women who were individual gaining the right to practice law on a state by state basis. By 1930, fifty years later, only two percent of all American lawyers and judges were women. As a subset, African American women, often slaves, have an early powerful history in pursuing the law as a means of obtaining their own freedom.

In 1655, Elizabeth Key, a slave, sued for her freedom by arguing that her status should be determined by the ancestry of her father, a free white, rather than that of her mother, a slave. Although Ms. Key won her case, in 1662, the Commonwealth of Virginia responded by legislating that whether or not a child is a slave or free person will be determined in accordance with their mother’s status (thereby overturning the court’s decision). The Eighteenth Century remained a period of little change for the status of women in the law, both in terms of their rights as women and their right to be lawyers. Women generally could not own property and were even themselves considered to be the property of their husbands! (Oh My God, as Elle Woods would say!)

The 1700s found women slaves again arguing in court for their right to be free. Notably, in 1781, Mum Bett won her independence from slavery in a Massachusetts court after advising her counsel to use the constitutional premise that “all men are born free and equal”. This is seen as the first time that a state constitution was used to challenge slavery. Following her victory, she changed her name to Elizabeth Freemen. Slightly over a century later, it would be another African-American woman, Lutie A. Lytle, who would become the first woman law professor in the nation. Beginning with Belle A. Mansfield in 1869 in Iowa, women slowly began gaining the right to practice law, state by state…In 1923, Delaware was the last state to admit women to the bar. In 1869, Lemma Barkaloo entered the Law Department of Washington University in St. Louis, thus becoming the first woman lawstudent in the nation. She did not complete her studies but passed the Missouri bar upon the conclusion of her first year of study and began practicing in 1870.

It is interesting to note that of all the regions in the US, the Northeast, with the highest concentration of male attorneys, the longest history of male attorneys, and the most prestigious law schools, was the most resistant to the admission of women to the practice of law. In fact, Harvard University, ostensibly the best law school in the nation (and law school of choice for Elle Woods in Legally Blonde), did not admit women to its law school until as late as 1950. From early on, as women entered the profession of law, contrasting views have arisen as to their role and contribution to the law. On one hand, women have argued that there is no difference in the way law is practiced by men and women, that the two genders are equivalent and thus equal in all aspects.

However, another argument is made that women have brought to the law a unique perspective, one that is less adversarial than the traditional method (established by men) of trying cases in a court of law and declaring one side the winner and the other the loser. In an effort to find case resolution that entertains the philosophy of a “win-win” instead, women have expanded the law into areas of alternative dispute resolution such as mediation, especially in the areas of employment and family law, where it is not necessarily appropriate or desirable to have an outright winner and loser.

Similarly, a more gentle approach to adjudication has been suggested by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In a speech given shortly before her nomination to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg suggested that “[m]easured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication. Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable.” Ginsburg has also urged that the Supreme Court allow for dialogue with elected branches, a notion not previously considered by the men who served before her.

Legal Language Arts

ALIBI – A provable account of an individual’s whereabouts at the time of the commission of a crime that makes it impossible for said individual to have committed said crime.

ASSAULT – Any willful attempt or threat to inflict injury upon another person and the apparent present ability to do so. The individual threatening the assault is the “assailant”.

ASSOCIATE – An individual working in a law firm who is not a partner, or owner, in said firm.

BAILIFF – A court attendant; an individual who works within a courtroom and is charged with keeping order, custody of the jury or the prisoners while the court is in session.

COMMON LAW MARRIAGE – A marriage not based upon legal ceremony and compliance with required formalities but upon the agreement of two individuals who are legally competent to live together for a substantial period of time as husband and wife.

CROSS EXAMINATION – The questioning of a witness by an individual or attorney other than the one who called said witness on matters to which the witness has testified during Direct Examination.

DEFENDANT – In a criminal trial, the defendant is the person accused of the crime.

DEFENSE – The evidence and testimony offered by the defendant to defeat the criminal charge.

DIRECT EXAMINATION – The questioning of the witness by the counsel who has directed said witness to be present.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY (or D.A.) – Essentially, an attorney for the state; an attorney who, on behalf of the people of a state, prosecutes (i.e., initiates and carries out a legal action to its conclusion) the case against a defendant charged with breaking the state’s laws. There are also district attorneys who protect and prosecute for the United States Government (ie. the federal government).

GAVEL – A small hammer-like instrument used by a judge to call for order and attention in a courtroom.

LSAT – Law School Admission Test. The LSAT is taken by all individuals who want to apply to law school and is intended to measure certain basic reasoning abilities deemed to be important in the successful study of law.

MOTIVE – The cause or reason that moves an individual to a certain action. In a criminal trial, the reason why the defendant committed the crime with which s/he is charged.

PATENT – Something that is evident or obvious. A legal patent for an invention gives the inventor the absolute right to the invention and protects it so as to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention for a period of time without first obtaining the patent holder’s permission.

PERJURY – A criminal offense that involves making false statements, or lying, while testifying (making statements as a witness in court) under oath.

PLEA – In a criminal case, the “plea” is the statement by the defendant as to whether they are “guilty or not guilty”, made at the arraignment (the proceeding during which the state charges a person with a crime).

PLEA BARGAIN – an arrangement whereby the district attorney on behalf of the state and the defendant and his or her attorney negotiate a mutually agreeable resolution of the case, for example, less jail time provided the defendant “pleads guilty” to the crime or testifies against someone else involved in the crime.

RESIGNATION – A formal renouncement or relinquishment of a position or an office; for example, “After being charged with assault, he offered his resignation as director of the Peace Foundation.”

TRIAL – An examination and determination of issues between parties, whether they are issues of law or of fact, before and by a judge (and sometimes a jury) in a court of law.

FUN FACTS

• Legally Blonde: The Musical premiered on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on April 29, 2007, and ran for 595 performances. It was nominated for several Tony Awards, including Best Original Score and Best Leading Actress in a Musical for Laura Bell Bundy (Elle Woods).
• The musical is based on the 2001 film Legally Blonde starring Reese Witherspoon. However, it adds new songs, characters, and plot elements that are unique to the stage adaptation.
• Beyond its comedic elements, the musical explores themes of empowerment, self-discovery, and the importance of staying true to oneself. It’s known for its upbeat and positive message.
• The musical has been performed in numerous countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Korea, and Japan, among others. It has been translated in several languages, adapting the story for different cultures.